"Doing more with less" is an often-repeated mantra not only in IT, but also in business ... and life in general. Over the years, technology has been pivotal in helping organizations and individuals complete tasks more quickly while exerting less effort.

A few notable examples of time-saving tech that has shaped the modern workplace: The printing press drastically accelerated copying documents, the typewriter helped us get words to the page quickly, and the telephone enabled us to chat with someone across the globe in real time. And more recently, email made it easy for us to send text and documents instantly ... no postman or paper required.

Today, we often take for granted that digital versions of these once-revolutionary technologies come bundled in a single software package many of us use every day. In offices around the world, you'll find professionals hard at work using the modern productivity suite, which can include word-processing, email, spreadsheet, and presentation software, as well as instant messaging and file-sharing apps. And these powerful office tools empower many millions of office workers to get their jobs done.

But that raises the question: Whose productivity suite software do companies use most, and who will dominate the market in the foreseeable future?

Sizing up the current productivity suite landscape

When you think about office productivity suites, names like Microsoft Office and G Suite by Google (formerly Google Apps for Work) probably come to mind. And while Microsoft Office has been the default name in the productivity market for years, have younger, cloud-based competitors managed to steal market share? And what about alternatives from Apple and open-source communities ... have those caught on at all?

To better understand organizations’ adoption plans and perceptions of office productivity suites, we surveyed more than 1,100 IT professionals across the US, Canada, and the UK who influence technology purchase decisions in their organizations.

According to our survey results, Microsoft is still by far the most dominant player in office productivity. In fact, 82 percent of companies are using an on-premises version of Microsoft Office. In addition, 53 percent of businesses are using the as-a-service offering, Office 365, paying an ongoing monthly fee per user for access to Microsoft’s online apps and/or local versions of Office depending on subscription tier… which explains the overlap between on-premises Office and Office 365 usage. Case in point, when we looked more closely at the numbers, we found that 37 percent of organizations are using both on-premises Office and Office 365 concurrently.

Other productivity suite contenders

According to the data, Microsoft’s primary competition comes from Google. We found that 26 percent of organizations are using some version of Google’s cloud-based productivity apps. More specifically, 17 percent of organizations are using G Suite by Google (formerly Google Apps for Work) where you pay an ongoing subscription per user, while 16 percent are using the free versions of Google's productivity tools, such as Gmail and Google Docs, that lack important workplace features such as enterprise access-level controls.

While they trail Microsoft by a wide margin, our data shows Google's productivity apps have a much stronger position in some industries. For example, in education, 54 percent of organizations reported using G Suite, while 29 percent reported using Google Docs/Gmail. Among nonprofits, 21 percent of organizations reported using G Suite. And while “Shadow IT” usage was not captured in this research, given the popularity of Gmail in consumer markets, it follows that some users might utilize Google’s productivity apps even if they aren’t sanctioned by IT.

Also of note in our survey, 16 percent of companies said they run open-source productivity software suites, such as LibreOffice and OpenOffice. Rounding out the list but far behind in the race for productivity dominance, 3 percent of companies said they use Apple iWork for iCloud.

When we broke down usage by company size, we found some notable differences in productivity software usage in small and large businesses. For example, companies with less than 100 employees are more likely to use the as-a-service Office 365 suite and less likely to use on-premises versions of Microsoft Office than larger companies. Additionally, the smallest businesses were more likely to use open-source productivity suites than larger enterprises.

Future business use of productivity suites: Office 365 on the rise

In the near term, Microsoft Office is expected to maintain its dominance in the productivity software market. And over the next two years, Office 365 is expected to see significant growth, while competitors will only see modest gains at best.

The survey data shows an additional 17 percent of companies plan to start using Office 365 within the next two years, and the productivity suite’s biggest gains will be among large enterprises. According to the data, an additional 24 percent of organizations with more than 1,000 employees plan to adopt Office 365 by the end of 2019.

Microsoft Office usage breakdown: How common are out-of-date productivity suites?

While Office 365 is expected to gain ground in the future, many organizations will continue to use the on-premises Microsoft Office installs they already own in the years to come. But which versions of the productivity suite do companies have installed on their devices, and how old is this software?

To find out, we examined anonymized, aggregate deployment data from Spiceworks that shows productivity suite penetration rates, the percentage of companies running at least one instance of a version of Office. When it comes to currently-supported Microsoft productivity software, we learned that Office 2010 is the most commonly deployed version of Office in the workplace: 83 percent of organizations across the globe run it somewhere on their networks. Additionally, the data shows 46 percent of organizations are running Office 2013, and 17 percent are running Office 2016.

However, as with operating system upgrades, many organizations have put off updating all of their older productivity software. The data shows 68 percent of companies are still running instances of Office 2007, despite the fact that the software reached its end of support in October 2017. Additionally, 46 percent of companies are still using at least one instance of the even older Office 2003, while 15 percent are running Office XP (version 2002), and 21 percent are holding on to the ancient Office 2000.

Although they might not grab as many headlines as end-of-support OSes, Office suites that are past their prime are susceptible to danger, similar to their OS cousins.
Just like any software or system in use, productivity suites need to be patched for security reasons. And once an OS no longer receives updates, it's a security liability. And over the years, there have been hundreds of vulnerabilities identified in Microsoft Office.

Which companies are still running Office 2007?

Since Office 2007 just reached its end of support date in October 2017 and it’s the most common unsupported Office suite in the workplace, we took a closer look at the penetration rate figures. When we did, we found that mid-size companies employing 100 to 1,000 employees are more likely to run Office 2007 than either the smallest or largest companies.

This makes sense: After all, our data shows the smallest companies currently enjoy the highest adoption levels of Office 365 (which should always be up to date), and larger companies with bigger IT budgets often have the resources to stay current with software and as-a-service subscriptions.

When cash-strapped businesses struggle to come up with the cash to purchase hundreds of licenses for the latest version of Microsoft Office or can’t afford to pay an ongoing monthly subscription fee per each employee, their most logical course of action might be to —you guessed it— do more with less by hanging on to old software. That said, according to our 2018 State of IT, IT budgets at companies of all sizes are expected to stabilize next year, and in many cases grow.
As a result, we can expect some IT departments to start to upgrading out-of-support software to new on-premises solutions, or cloud-based services such as Office 365/Office Online.

What businesses look for in a productivity suite: Reliability and user-friendliness

To help understand what drives companies to stick with a productivity suite or try out a new one, we also asked IT pros to tell us which attributes are most important when considering office productivity software. According to our survey results, reliability and user-friendliness top the list: 90 percent of IT pros said the reliability is very to extremely important, while 81 percent said the same about user friendliness.

Additionally, 70 percent of IT pros also said having a productivity software suitable for professional tasks is very to extremely important, while 65 percent said the same about both manageability and cost effectiveness.

Office productivity suite superlatives: On-premises still preferred

As it turns out, IT pros consider the on-premises version of Microsoft Office the most reliable and user-friendly productivity suite offering. And when we looked at how the other productivity suites ranked in terms of important attributes, we found that Office 365 wasn't far behind.

Microsoft Office and Office 365 were both ranked in the top two spots for security, ease of management, and professional-grade features. And since it's an as-a-service product, Office 365 unsurprisingly ranked the highest among the competition in terms of scalability.

But don't walk away thinking Microsoft scored a clean sweep across the board. When it comes to cost, open-source productivity suites, such as LibreOffice, in addition to free, online offerings like Gmail and Google Docs apps earned the highest scores, as they provide viable options for businesses that are strapped for cash.

Wrapping up: The lasting legacy of Microsoft Office

Now that we've examined all of the data, it’s clear that Microsoft is still the king of office productivity, and that’s not going to change any time soon. And despite the increasing popularity of cloud-based and as-a-service productivity software from both Microsoft and Google, there’s still a huge installed base of on-premises Microsoft Office software in the workplace.

Additionally, because the on-premises versions of Office got high marks in many areas that matter most to businesses, one could argue that older versions of productivity software that are already paid for do the job adequately, despite not having the latest and greatest features. And if companies already have an older solution in place that does the job, this might explain why some organizations are hanging on to older software, even past end-of-support dates.

However, a clear shift is underway. Our data shows Office 365 is expected to see the most growth among productivity suites over the next two years, and because its as-a-service model includes plans that allow organizations download the newest versions of Office, many companies will move away from out of support productivity suites.

Also, since IT budgets and staffing are expected to rise in 2018, many IT departments will have more resources to spend on software. In other words, because of these trends, we can expect to see fewer organizations run outdated productivity suites in the years to come.

Methodology

The Spiceworks survey was conducted in September 2017 and included 1,168 IT professionals across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom who influence the technology purchase decisions at their organization. Respondents are among the millions of IT professionals in Spiceworks and represent a variety of company sizes, including small- to-medium-sized businesses and enterprises. Respondents also come from a variety of industries including manufacturing, healthcare, nonprofits, education, retail, government, and finance. The survey data was supplemented by Spiceworks technology deployment data based on an anonymized, aggregated sample of hundreds of thousands of IT professionals across the globe who use Spiceworks products to inventory their organizations’ hardware, software, and cloud services.

Interestingly, my brother, who is going for an accounting degree, is being taught using open office. The accounts who I know won't take anything but MS Office because of the advanced formulas it has. Thanks education system for equipping the next generation of workers with the wrong tools.

Love to see the Office 2007 stuff kicking around. I suppose that means most people are stuck on ancient exchange as well (support for RPC with Exchange 2016 dropped, latest version supported is 2010 I think). Glad to hear my Ex 2010 installation isn't the last of its kind :) Its only fresh cause we're making the jump now.

Seriously though (as I stand on the edge of Ex 2016) thinking O365 has some tangible bits in it, that make it a viable jump from on prem Office. Teams comes to mind. Yep I get there are tons of alternatives to Teams but that integration looks good especially with inclusion now of Sharepoint online. Maybe just me.

If I hadn't let my elUsers go rampant with using email as a file storage device I'd be jumping to Hybrid Exchange and O365.

I've used Libre Office. The things it did to excel files was entertaining (notorious for inserting special characters into the file). Otherwise I thought it was pretty decent. If I were starting from scratch I'd consider it. Also if we were a small op, new network, or the like I'd be considering O365 or Libre Office depending on what the customer base looked like. I suppose the survey isn't much of a surprise.

No mention of Zoho? Their suite of tools is much more comprehensive than Google's for SMB. They have the normal productivity software, but then also integrate with their accounting, CRM, email marketing, etc.

I still have nightmares of having to use Open Office for my college courses years ago, because I couldn't cough up the cash to purchase a license. Thankfully, students can get 365 for free and pretty much every college will have the full A3 or A5 Office 365 seeing how cheap it is per user.

I found that in talking to non-profits that most don't realize the Microsoft offers a charity license for free or close to free. My dad is with a small non-profit and they went with Google for a few years because Google did a better job of marketing their free/cheap offerings. Once I told him about MS for 503c's they switched within a year - everything. The free version includes web based apps, but most of their group has their own home license for $69/$99 year.

We are in the middle of migration from Office 2010 (yes I know it's older and outdated, but I inherited the role and licenses from former team), over to Office 365 as it's a more like an SMB here. We have a lot of staff, but there's a chunk of field techs who only need email only, and maybe 200 actual office support staff who need MS Office and in reality, only Word, Excel, PP and Outlook which is the core of Office 365. So in essence Office 365 was a perfect fit for us.

Our licensing expires next year for the Office 2010, so we are midway though the transition to 365 right now.

I personally prefer LibreOffice for my own home use, and see no reason to buy MS Office for myself for the intermittent use it would get, or pay a monthly fee either. I have been using it since Open Office was released, then got stagnated by Sun, and then switched to LibreOffice when their devs split off to continue work under Libre banner. I do like it and compatibility with MS Office at least and well worth the install, but for a larger business I can't see the use case for it when you need proper licensing and support ... then as much as I hate handing money to MS .. Office is the way to go, either on prem or 365.

Office's staying power has a lot to do with "how we have always done" as much as their solid tools. I tried OpenOffice in college and it was laughable the difference in quality between it and Office. That has been a little over 10 years ago, so I am sure it's a lot better now. Our enterprise has moved to Google as an enterprise platform about 5 years ago, but 90% of the accountants and other similar professionals use Office still even though the Google enterprise platform is at their fingertips.

The same goes for me. If I need a heavy collaboration, I will use Google, but especially with spreadsheets, I will first develop the framework in Excel and then convert it to a Google Sheet to share with my work group. The processing efficiency and familiarity of Excel make it difficult to sell other tools to the people in our enterprise. People who don't care about amazing and easy formatting and crazy little nuances like how Excel counts the rows and things that you are working on (filtering, etc.) are fine with Sheets. The same goes for Google Docs. The formatting tools are so rudimentary compared to Word. Google Docs does what it does well, but it's more what it doesn't do that has people in my office stuck with it.

I feel like I just referred to 80% of the Office Rulz cliches, but I believe these numbers and doubt they will see drastic changes for the foreseeable future.